be more confusing, actually

most people are doing exactly the wrong thing to get others to pay attention

inside the mind of a project life person

Working with artists, entrepreneurs, service providers, I witness a LOT of (often valid) hand-wringing over the threat of AI.

People are worried AI will steal their jobs, their art, their girl. And not for nothing! We have too many guys with bad haircuts and damaged egos controlling this stuff, but we can get into that later.

If you’re worried you won’t be able to stand out in an AI-powered crowd, you need to become more confusing.

You know what's deeply uncanny valley vibes? People who make perfect sense.

People whose entire persona could have been trained on three BeReal posts and a Pinterest board titled 'that girl morning routine (neutral aesthetic) (Zara basics) (oat milk)’

People who act like walking LinkedIn headlines.

People who are completely, tediously legible.

Nothing they post ever really surprises you. Nothing they create makes you tilt your head and go "wait... whaaa?"

Everyone's trying to optimize themselves into the perfect, easily digestible personal brand.

And guess what? Their dolphin smooth skin aesthetics, congruent cohesive-ness, Clean Girl™️ vanilla aspirational-yet-mystifyingly swagless vibe is the mental equivalent of ultra processed food — devoid of nutrition, of roughage, of something that sticks to your ribs. I consumed the unseasoned chicken breast energy of their profile 0.169 seconds ago and I’m already starving again.

These types of people remind me of AI trying to pass the Turing test.

Yeah, OK, they might be real people, but they're basically indistinguishable from AI at this point because they've buffed away everything that makes humans actually interesting: our weird obsessions, our random projects, our ability to surprise.

The Death of Charisma is Predictability

Charismatic and magnetic people are CONFUSING.

They’ve got edges. Beautiful, fascinating, craggy edges that give people something to hold onto. The kind of edges that snag people's attention like a ring catching on a sweater.

They start a podcast about medieval brewing techniques while learning to code so they can personally figure out how to replace the mouse on their website with a tiny sparkly firework. They get really into collecting vintage toasters for three months and then pivot to teaching themselves classical Greek. They have passions that make absolutely no sense together, and that's exactly what makes them captivating.

You can’t look away because you can’t figure them out, and your gorgeous little brain is always trying to make meaning of what you see in the world.

Here's the thing about being completely knowable: once people figure you out, they stop paying attention.

When someone can summarize your entire personality in an elevator pitch… girl, you're in danger. But when they have to say "I don't know how to explain them, you just have to meet them" — the power!

Interesting people, magical people, complex real life non-AI people?

You can spot them in the wild because they live project-based lives. They entertain these strange, unjustifiable, seemingly arbitrary endeavors that no AI would ever think to combine.

Because while an LLM can simulate consistency, it can't simulate the genuine enthusiasm of someone who's three weeks deep into researching the history of Victorian doorknobs just because they think they’re “neat.”

These Project People are algorithm-proof because they refuse to be categorized. They're the human equivalent of those Captchas that make you question if you actually know what a traffic light looks like.

As VC philosopher-king Paul Graham notes in his essay "A Project of One’s Own,"

Working on a project of your own is as different from ordinary work as skating is from walking. It's more fun, but also much more productive.

What proportion of great work has been done by people who were skating in this sense? If not all of it, certainly a lot.

Projects >>>>>> Goals

honestly, this is kind of the philosophy… projects beget goals, babes

Every innovative moment in history came from someone who was giving major project energy. Marie Curie said “what if rocks but spicy?” and literally glowed up (unfortunately also literally, rest in power, queen). Edison was like "darkness is so last season." Steve Jobs looked at a phone and said "but what if it ate the internet?" These breakthroughs weren't the products of SMART goals. These were vibes. Projects! The kind of creative chaos that makes venture capitalists nervous and historians giddy.

Goals are projects that lost their soul to a productivity app. Projects are what happen when your creativity puts on its best outfit and choses violence.

You know who creates goals? Middle managers and lifestyle influencers trying to sell you a course on "manifesting abundance."

You know who creates projects? Artists. Inventors. ALCHEMISTS.

Build a Life of Projects Instead of a Life of Goals

Real humans are weird and contradictory. They have random obsessions that don't fit their "brand." They go through phases. They abandon hobbies and pick them back up years later.

They contain multitudes, and those multitudes don't need to have a coherent narrative thread.

Projects let you be gloriously non-linear. You don't have to turn every interest into a side hustle or your entire personality. You can just... have a woodworking project. And a Bollywood dance project. And a project to learn all the words to Nicki Minaj's verse in Monster. None of these things need to make sense together. They don't need to serve your personal brand or your five-year plan.

This is actually your greatest asset. The most interesting insights, the most compelling art, the most innovative solutions come from connecting dots that don't obviously go together.

Your brain doesn't work in straight lines — it's more like a spider spinning a web while on psychedelics, making connections through intuitive leaps and seemingly random associations.

Think about it — which version of you is more compelling:

• The one who "likes reading and hiking" (congrats, you're a middling Hinge profile)

• Or the one who's "currently researching historical poison gardens for a murder mystery novel while learning to make traditional Korean kimchi" (hello, please come to my dinner party immediately)

To be adored for your perfection is to live in a prison of your own making. To be admired for your illusiveness, for your mystery? That’s true freedom, showgirl.

An Indecent Proposal

So here's my proposal: Instead of setting goals that feel like homework assignments from a particularly uninspired life coach, start collecting projects like they're Pokemon cards. Let your interests cross-pollinate like they're at a honeybee rave.

Consider this your official permission slip to:

• Have multiple unrelated projects running simultaneously

• Refuse to pick a niche

• Be impossible to elevator pitch

• Make people work a little to figure you out

• Have interests that make absolutely no sense together

If you're naturally a little bit confusing, congratulations! You're already ahead of the game.

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